Tag Archives: pharisees

It has always been a bit of a strange thing to me how followers of Jesus came to be seen as collectively ‘holier than thou’. How over the millennia we serially get caught up in elaborate morality systems, measuring others by how much they share the same code and punishing those who do not.

It is not as though this was the model for life that Jesus gave us. As far as we are able to understand his way of teaching, way of living, he seemed to react against those in his time who lived this kind of religious life. Remember all those exchanges with the Pharisees, who had a rigid rule to measure everything against. By total contrast, Jesus seemed much keener for his disciples to live deeply and fully, opening themselves up to the wild ways of the Spirit and subjugating all sorts of rules to the overarching principle called love.

Having said that, let us not pretend that morality has no place within the life of faith. It is not as if anything goes. Choices we make in life have consequences – even passive choices. But those outside the holy huddles will often accuse those inside of rank hypocrisy, suggesting that we do not live according to our principles, let alone live up to the life of Jesus. Remember these words attributed to Ghandi?

I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it’s not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time.

Or these, which he wrote in his autobiography;

I heard of a well known Hindu having been converted to Christianity. It was the talk of the town that, when he was baptized, he had to eat beef and drink liquor, that he also had to change his clothes, and that thenceforth he began to go about in European costume including a hat. These things got on my nerves. Surely, thought I, a religion that compelled one to eat beef, drink liquor, and change one’s own clothes did not deserve the name. I also heard that the new convert had already begun abusing the religion of his ancestors, their customs and their country. All these things created in me a dislike for Christianity.

All of this starts for me to highlight the fact that although shaping our souls towards love may involve a constant processions of moral choices, morality itself should not be the starting point.

There was a story in The Guardian yesterday that made a rather different point about morality- suggesting that there might be an inverse relationship between highly developed ethical/moral belief and ethical/moral action. In other words, perhaps those who have rigid moral belief might be LESS likely to act on these beliefs.

Ethical philosophy isn’t the most scintillating of subjects, but it has its moments. Take, for example, the work of the US philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, who’s spent a large chunk of his career confirming the entertaining finding that ethicists aren’t very ethical. Ethics books, it turns out, are more likely to be stolen from libraries than other philosophy books. Ethics professors are more likely to believe that eating animals is wrong, but no less likely to eat meat. They’re also more likely to say giving to charity is a moral obligation, but they were less likely than other philosophers to return a questionnaire when researchers promised to donate to charity if they did. Back when the American Philosophical Association charged for some meetings using an honesty system, ethicists were no less likely to freeload.

One take on this is that ethicists are terrible hypocrites. As Schwitzgebel points out, that’s not necessarily as bad as it sounds: if philosophers were obliged to live by their findings, that might exert a “distortive pressure” on their work, tempting them to reach more self-indulgent conclusions about the moral life. (And there’s a case to be made, after all, that it’s better for people to preach the right thing but not practise it than to do neither.) But another possibility bears thinking about. It’s plausible to suggest that ethicists have an unusually strong sense of what’s right and wrong; that’s what they spend their days pondering, after all. What if their overdeveloped sense of morality – their confidence that they know what’s what, ethically speaking – makes them less likely to act ethically in real life?

Hmmm, what if our churches carry a similar kind of ethical corruption? Later the article describes something called “moral licensing”, the deep-seated human tendency that leaves us feeling entitled to do something bad because we’ve already done something good. It explains why people give up plastic bags, then feel justified in taking a long-haul flight, obliterating the carbon savings. It’s also why, if you give people a chance to condemn sexist statements, they’ll subsequently be more likely to favour hiring a man in a male-dominated profession.

How might this play out in our religion? A focus on those parts of us that are good so we can blind ourselves to those parts of us that are not? A compartmentalism that means we can live externally moral religious lives whilst compromising on some of the most basic ways of loving our neighbours.

One reaction to this (a very common one in our churches) is the call from the pulpit to be MORE moral. The call to purify, to get our moral codes sorted and organised. The degree to which this ever works is rather doubtful, to my mind at least. We are all of us a complex mess of aspiration and failure at the surface and subliminal levels; old sinful habits die hard in me.

What we need to do then, we followers of Jesus, is to return to trying to understand his relationship with morality. We have to remember that the moral leaders of his day clearly regarded him as immoral. He drank, he mixed with the unclean and ungodly, he broke religious rules, he disrupted churchyness, smashed up tables, upset good people and seemed to prefer low-lifes.

Morality was something to be challenged, to be tested, to be subjugated towards love. Morality was not to be seen as the goal, or the most valid measure, not even of righteousness.

Michaela and I had a strange encounter the other day whilst walking around Keswick.

We were stopped by three boys- all aged around 12-13, two of them standing slightly to one side and letting the bravest one do all the talking. He stuttered and stumbled his way into asking us if we minded answering a ‘small questionnaire’. We were in no hurry and they seemed like nice lads so we agreed. We assumed it was some kind of school project (although I had this nagging suspicion…)

The lads had no prepared written questions, nor any apparent need to write down our answers- and the conversation went something like this;

“Erm, have you ever, erm, told a lie?”

I replied that I had not- apart from what I had just said- but then realised that irony was pointless so just said that I had indeed told lies.

“What do you call someone who tells lies?”

We agreed that they were called liars

“Erm, have you ever hated anyone?”

A little bit, I replied, and we settled on the fact that people who hate were called haters.

I said that I had but Michaela said that she had not- which if you know her is quite believable. The boy however seemed highly skeptical. We then agreed that people who steal things are theives

Then things got rather surreal.

Ok, have you ever looked at a member of the opposite sex with lust?”

The poor lad flushed up a bit and his two mates shuffled their feet and looked pointedly away. I was tempted to point out that I was stood next to my wife and lust had indeed had a part to play in our relationship, but in the end just said that I would never dream of doing such a thing. By now of course I knew exactly where the conversation was heading, as I am sure you do too.

The lad then brought out his killer line; his closer; his hook; his sales pitch;

“The Bible says that if you do any of these things in your mind then it is like you are doing them for real. If you look at anyone with hate you are murdering them, and if you look at them with lust you are raping them.”

He then wound himself up a little and looked at me- not Michaela.

“You have just told me – I have not said it, it came out of your own mouth – that you are a liar, and thief, a murderer and a rapist… what do you think you need to do about that?”

Michaela and I could take no more, and politely pointed out that these were not new issues for us and that we were actually Christians. We wished the lads well and went on our way.

Which was a shame really as both of us wanted to know where the lads were from- what Christian group would send them out into the crowds of a holiday town with that kind of material, and whether they really believed they were doing something good, something right.

Both of us were troubled by our encounter.We shook our heads and raised our eyebrows for about an hour afterwards.

These questions still linger with me;

Did the organisers of this group of kids really expect us to be convicted of our sin by this kind of approach; to repent and turn to God on the spot?

Does this kind of evangelism ever work? Are we not all innoculated against it now, and if not- how many encounters are required for even a single conversion? How many are required for a single meaningful conversation even?

Is it not just a little creepy to set young boys on the task of asking about the lust-fullness of a random middle aged couple? Then to tell us that we are murderers and rapists?

If the real issue was shock- training for the boys in holy boldness and firmness of their own faith, then what might they be learning from these encounters? Chronic embarrassment or the power of the gospel let loose on the mean streets?

Where is the creativity, the playful engagement with culture, the relevance to the relaxed holidaymakers in a busy market town?

Where is the honesty? Sucking people into a conversation like this, only to sting them with what some people might find offensive?

Of course, viewed through the lens of conservative evangelicalism all of these are non-questions. What the boys were doing was to follow the purest expression of the Great Commission. They were giving people the opportunity to save their souls from the eternal torment that is our just punishment for sin. This was what Jesus came into the world for and any other Christian activity is subservient to this task.

The passage that the boys had built their ‘questionnaire’ on is of course Matthew chapter 5- the sermon on the mount. Jesus takes on the surface religiosity of the Pharisees and turns it on its head.

And religiosity always needs to be turned on its head.

I really hope that the faith of these boys will survive their encounter with religion.

Avoid if of a sensitive disposition- or if you are under/over the age at which knowledge of profanity should not be encouraged…

If like me, your tolerance for such things hints at your backslidden sinful state, then click on…

I stumbled across this whilst wasting time when I should have been DIYing (I now have water coming through the ceiling beneath where I recently installed a new shower. AGHHH!)

It set me thinking again about heaven, and hell, and what we might encounter when we die…

Oh, and I liked the accents too.

So what do we think about heaven and hell?

It seems that we Christians have two options to choose from-

Option 1- lots of soft clouds, harps and gold- HEAVEN

Option 2- fire, smoke, eternal torment- HELL

Hmmmm- which one do you fancy?

This, I suppose has been the evangelical strategy of church for a long time. Even though it has always troubled me- (back to those old Chick cartoons again I suppose!) It was not really that this narrow view of our impending fate was questionable within the theological understanding I was part of, but more that it was usually played down by most, and perhaps OVERPLAYED by some others.

But questions about the essential truth of this equation were never encouraged. Some of this was about Biblical truth, and the unassailable network that had been constructed around particular meanings, and some of it was about POWER- and the in-out stuff that allows us to decide who is OK, and who is not.

My concerns have always been for the following reasons-

Is it OK to SCARE people into the Kingdom? Or are we just telling it like it is?

Will a God of love REALLY throw all these people- good and bad, kids and those who have learning disabilities- any who died without a profession of faith- into a lake of fire to burn in agony for eternity?

What about Jesus? What did he have to say about this? These words are often quoted– And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where “their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched. (Mark 9:45-45)

And what about heaven? Does it not just sound slightly boring? A church service that never ends? (I have been in a few of those- or it seemed like it at the time!) Is this just the least-worse option?

Then there is the ‘your-reward-will-be-in-heaven’ business. Do lots of good, as you will get a nice big mansion, with a throne view.

So where am I up to now?

Well I realised that lots of Christian traditions have different views about heaven and hell. Some people have always had the concerns above, and even dared to express them.

To give McLaren another plug, I read his book ‘The last word and the word after that‘ a few years ago, and it was another one of those painful experiences, where I found myself confronting things I had avoided for fear of losing faith altogether.

But the end result was a deepening of the sense of who God might be, and how he might engage with us all.

In particular I was amazed to discover that the view of heaven and hell I had accepted as a fixed Biblical position appeared to have its origins outside the Bible, and perhaps even outside the Judeo-Christian world (this is not an idea original to McLaren, it seems, but is well understood by many Theologians, but ignored as irrelevant by others.)

One of the discoveries that led to the book came to me several years ago, but I don’t remember exactly how. I remember noticing that a number of Old Testament writers didn’t seem to believe in an afterlife. It was obvious in Ecclesiastes, but you know – that whole book seems odd. It struck me in some of the Psalms especially. Then I noticed this lack of belief in afterlife in other places, and I realized that Sheol wasn’t the same as hell.

Then I began to notice that Jesus talked about hell a lot, which let me know that something must have happened between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New. I was curious about what happened during that time.

What appears to have happened is that some Jewish sects/denominations (but not all) adopted ideas of heaven and hell from other religions- such as the Zoroastrians, and this synthesis of belief systems became the understanding through which the Jewish people engaged with God.

There were apparently significant differences in for example, the Pharisees understanding of heaven and hell, and that of the Saducees. The former believed in the resurrection of the dead and the latter did not. Interestingly, it seems that the Saducees rejected the Pharisaical views on an afterlife on the basis of a literalistic interpretation of the Bible, rejecting the exegesis and oral traditions of the Pharisees. Truth wars were raging then too!

It seems that these grouping effectively became political parties too- so religion was definitely mixed with politics!

Does this matter?

Well when you read again the questions put to Jesus in the form of tests by these groups, it seems at least possible that they were attempting to either bring Jesus within their own fold, or expose his theology to be outside their understanding of truth, and so reject him.

The wonderful thing about Jesus is that these attempts failed, because he saw the trap coming a mile away, and neatly stepped around it. He seemed to have no time for this way of seeing faith.

Is it possible then that at least some of the words of Jesus in relation to heaven and hell can be read in the light of the context in which he was engaging? Does this change our understanding of what he was saying, or how it was recorded?

STOP! I hear you cry. This is going too far- it is a liberal re-interpretation of the Bible that will end in heresy!

In my defense, I offer no fixed positions to invite you to join me onto, and thereby defend.

But I dare to believe that the life that goes on when we are done here will always remain to us a wonderful mystery.

And I dare to hope that Jesus may yet find a way to save those who we have lost.

Hell may or may not be the place that burns up that part of us that is unworthy and unwelcome in the presence of the Living God.

And I pray that by his mercy, I will fall into the arms of a loving God.